2022 Puro Rofe Listán Mecánico
WINEMAKER: Carmelo Pena
REGION: Canary Islands, SP
VARIETY: Listán Negro, Malvasía Volcánica
VITICULTURE: Organic
EXTREMELY LIMITED. "The other wine produced in collaboration with winemaker Eloi Cedo (Sistema Vinari) is the red 2022 Listán Mecánico, made with Listán Negro, mostly from Juan Bello, and a touch of Malvasía Volcánica. It has character, with notes of fig leaf, white pepper, struck match, flint, some aromatic hints of lavender, a salty palate and a beautiful texture with fine-grained and stony tannins. It has a reductive personality, but there's no oxidation or any hint of volatility. It's persistent and long, quite amazing. 618 bottles produced." - Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate
Lanzarote lies less than 100 kilometres from Western Sahara and, of all the Islands in the Canaries, it feels and looks the most like an extension of the African continent. Unlike Tenerife or La Palma where a single volcano dominates the landscape, Lanzarote is composed of literally hundreds of smaller volcanoes, which have tended to erupt simultaneously in the past, creating a moonscape littered with volcanoes and craters.
The last major eruption here in the 1730s blanketed the entire island with small, black, aerated pebbles, like jet black pumice, which the locals call ‘rofe.’ It’s these pebbles that give the island its unique appearance and altered the terroir of Lanzarote so dramatically that viticulture only became possible after the 1730s eruptions. The rofe fittingly provides the name for our producer here, Puro Rofe, winemakers attempting the expression of pure volcanic stone.